New Orleans culture shapes John Boutté's multifaceted singing style
When the jazz icon hits the Harrison Festival of the Arts, he won’t be missing the Louisiana heat
John Boutté
The Harrison Festival of the Arts presents John Boutté at Harrison Memorial Hall on July 13. Boutté also plays the Vancouver Island Musicfest on July 9 and 10.
VEXED BY THE Vancouver summer’s slow start? Perhaps it’s time to consult an expert—like, say, jazz singer John Boutté. Born and raised in New Orleans—the birthplace of hot jazz—Boutté knows a thing or two about heat, and he says we’re lucky to have what we have.
“You know what? It was 101 at home, and it was shit!” he says, reached during a day off in the Lower Mainland, where’s he’s hanging out between gigs at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Vancouver Island Musicfest, and the Harrison Festival of the Arts. “This feels so good! I just don’t like being hot, man. It was brutal. I actually had a little heat exhaustion about a week ago, and it knocked me out for a day.
“I mean, I’m tough,” he continues. “I was in the Army, and I never even fuckin’ got it then, in Texas. But just walking around my property… I got 23 acres up in Lacombe, and most of that’s in the woods, but that day I got up and did my walk-around, did my calisthenics, went inside, and all of a sudden it was like somebody hit me on the head with a hammer.
“I was like ‘Oh my God. No, it can’t be COVID, ’cause I haven’t had it yet. Please don’t let it be COVID.’ But it wasn’t. it was just dehydration and exertion, man. Knocked me out for a day.”
Temperate climes appear to suit the 63-year-old vocalist, whose approach spans the gamut from jazz standards so cool that they make Hoagy Carmichael sound unduly hot and bothered to blazing funk, as typified by his uplifting yet down-and-dirty theme song for the hit TV series Treme. In fact, Boutté even lets slip that he loves B.C. and is thinking of applying for Canadian citizenship, a move that would definitely raise the local mercury by an appreciable extent.
Even buying his dream home an hour north of New Orleans has made the singer think twice about his relationship with his country of birth.
“It’s so fucking nice,” he says of his woodsy retreat. “I bought it six years ago; I got a 12-year mortgage on it and I paid that son of a bitch off in five years. And that was after I had three banks fucking red-line me. That’s America, man. It’s no good. The same old shit, you know.”
Have I mentioned that I interviewed Boutté on July 4th? Coincidence or not, Independence Day seems an apt time for him to sound off on everything from racial politics in the Deep South to his relative George Herriman, the Krazy Kat cartoonist and proto-Surrealist who passed for white in the Roaring 20s and subverted gender norms on a weekly basis by way of the Sunday funnies.
At the core of his identity, though, is that he grew up in New Orleans, in the kind of Creole family where culture—and music in particular—was an in-built feature of daily life. Even if, as he points out, the Bouttés had been more musical in the past.
“In actuality, it was the generation before us—my mother’s mother and father—who were the guys that played the mandolin, and like everybody in New Orleans, they had a piano in their house,” he notes. “But by the time I was eight years old I was reading music and playing the cornet, and I did that throughout high school. We had great music teachers in New Orleans, and they were all African-American. They were successful at teaching, and also some of them were playing professionally. So I had that kind of education.”
Cornet even saved his life, he contends. When developers pushed an interstate highway through the majority-black Seventh Ward, the ensuing pollution gave Boutté asthma, and a quick-thinking family physician came up with an unusual and effective prescription. “I went to this doctor to get some medication for these asthma attacks I was having, and then she recommended that my mother get me a wind instrument,” he recalls. “And I’ve never had another asthma attack after that.”
Although Boutté no longer plays the horn, or at least not in public, he says that the trumpet’s smaller cousin has had an effect on his singing, giving him a better understanding of breath control, dynamics, and especially projection. Where possible, he says, he prefers to sing without amplification—especially if he’s performing with his core band of acoustic guitar, upright bass, and piano—and has no problem reaching the furthest corners of any hall.
He might have been influenced in this by the sanctified church that backed on to his Catholic parents’ property. “Every Sunday morning, they would be swinging their ass off in that church,” he says. “It wasn’t like Catholic church service; no strumming guitars and that shit. They were shouting!”
Other inspirational factors were his sister Lillian, a backup singer for New Orleans legends Allan Toussaint and Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack who gave Boutté his first paid gigs, and Stevie Wonder, whose early praise convinced the singer to walk away from a career in banking in favour of the stage. Nonetheless, New Orleans culture shaped his multifaceted style more than any individual.
Today, the singer says that Hurricane Katrina left his home town irreparably changed. He mourns the influx of trustafarian hipsters that has driven house prices up to near-Vancouver levels. And he doesn’t see much room for improvement in an America that’s fast backsliding into its old racist ways. Yet Boutté remains convinced that New Orleans and its music will survive.
“We still have our traditions,” he says. “The Indians still come out on Mardi Gras, the Baby Dolls still come out on Mardi Gras. Zulu is still rolling on Mardi Gras. And we have our street parades. You think there are a lot of holidays in America, but in New Orleans there’s 50 percent more. Every day there’s a religious holiday or some kind of nationality holiday, and we still have a lifestyle that’s centred around family and fun and just trying to enjoy life, man. Just being in the moment.
“The other day,” Boutté adds, “I was in the city, driving back to Lacombe, and I saw a kid, or a young man—he was probably 14, 15 years old—and he was dancing at the bus stop. No radio, nothing plugged in, no music: just dancing his fucking ass off. And I remember doing that as a kid. We were just carefree. ‘Who gives a damn? We’re just dancing, dancing in the heat.’ So I just had to laugh. We’re still there!”
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